Springtime - May 2004

The days are getting hotter now, but the evenings are cool and breezy, especially on the back porch.

Mama and Daddy Bluebird already weaned their first bunch of babies and the chickadee family has about weaned theirs also.  The house sparrow that built their messy moss and mud nest over the light on the front
porch is just starting to set her eggs....much to the displeasure of Mama Ponder.  Mama Ponder has no patience for Mother Nature at all, especially Her messy critters and most critters, wild or tame, are too
messy for Mama Ponder's tastes.

The two fawn are almost a year old now, but still stick with their mom.  In the twilight of dawn and dusk they look like silent gray ghosts slowly moving across the back yard and fields, especially on foggy or misty mornings.  At first, you just sense their presence because they are invisible until they make the slightest movement.  We don't put out food for the coons, possums, and fox anymore.....not since Mama Skunk invited Herself to dinner.....Mama Ponder's orders.  It took two days to get the skunk smell out of the house from that one visit.   The darn heat pump really pumped the house full.  Whew!  I can still smell it every time I think about it.  But I still sneak out while Mama Ponder is napping and put some food out on the flat area above the house out back in the winter.  Two of our dogs, Wendy and Duchess, and one of our cats, Tiggar, are buried up on that flat.  The dogs loved to smell and bark at the wild night critters that came out of the woods up there and the cats loved to try to sneak up on the smaller ones—so I buried them up there—after I knew for sure they were dead of course.

Believe it or not, the hummingbirds, those fiesty little devils, have learned to coexist on one of our feeders.  It is a very large feeder so they have a tad more space between feeding positions.  Those pugnacious critters demand a certain amount of space.  If you ever think this world couldn't be any more screwed up than it already is, just be thankful hummingbirds aren't as large as elephants.

So far it has rained part of every day for a week and thunderstorms or possible showers are forecast for at least the next five days.  You have to really be on your toes to mow and fertilize in such weather.  I am still a week behind on mowing the front cliff.  My toes just aren't as young as they used to be so I don't spend much time up on them these days, also my balance is stuck on teeter and my memory disremembers ever knowing
anything.

Way back in 1967, an old special forces medic told me one day that, "you guys [meaning us special forces soldiers] are going to pay for what we put our bodies through one of these days."  Doc was right.  Payback for me began on my 63d birthday. Various body parts started falling off or malfunctioning as if on cue. Until then, everything worked just fine.  I've been walking around ever since looking over my shoulder as if ole Doc Montgomery is going to tap me on the shoulder and say, "I told you so, you big dummy."